Sometimes People Can Change
by mosylu
Summary: Caitlin and Cisco go to his high school reunion. Weirdly enough, ten years makes a difference for some people.
1. Chapter 1

Written for the tumblr prompt: "I need you to pretend we're dating . . . " Of course, I had to be contrary and have them actually dating.

* * *

"So, how much do you charge?"

Caitlin looked around at the man who'd just sat down in Cisco's spot at the table. "I'm sorry, what?"

Simon Danwell (according to his nametag) leaned forward, a little too close. Caitlin sat back in her chair, suppressing a cough at the waft of Axe that tried to scorch her esophagus.

"Cisco found you on Craigslist, right? Sent you a message that said, _My high school reunion's coming up, and I need you to pretend we're dating._ " He leered. "Is he paying you for the whole night?"

"He's not paying me at all," she said, taking a drink of water. Ugh. Had he marinated in the stuff?

"Uh-huh, yeah. I bet gigs like this are a lot of your business. What's your going rate? I've got a family wedding coming up - "

She set her cup down and held up her hand to stop him. "I'm his girlfriend. We work at Star Labs together. I'm a bioengineer and geneticist."

"Very professional! Good sticking to the cover story. It's a doozy. A bioengineer, that looks like you? Wow, he was really aiming high. But I guess you can do that if you're paying for it."

"He's not paying for anything, I told you. Wait, weren't you one of his friends in high school?" That was how Cisco had introduced him earlier, his eyes lighting up with delight as he dragged her over to meet "Si! Wow! Dude, how long has it been?"

I-Go-By-Simon-Now snorted. "Yeah, we were giant losers together. That's how I know a guy like him could never bag a chick like you in real life."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "First of all, a woman like me has chosen to be with a man like him for a year and a half. Second of all, what the hell kind of thing is that to say about somebody you call a friend?"

"Wow. He must have paid you a lot. That's a perfect reaction. Hey, I'm serious about that family wedding. You want to go somewhere and, you know, talk about it?"

Under the table, a hand covered her knee.

With one hand, she grabbed his wrist. With the other, she took his pinky and pulled it back until he caught his breath and his eyes went wide.

"The bones of the fingers are known as phalanges," she said. "Did you know the pinky finger is the easiest finger to break? They teach it in self-defense classes. Healing time really depends on the severity of the fracture. If it's bad enough, it could require surgery."

"Wha - you - "

"I did tell you I trained as a doctor," she said sweetly. "I'm proving it. Now I could snap the proximal phalange of your pinky, down here at the base, or I could go for the intermediate phalange, here in the middle." She rubbed her thumb over the tip of his pinky. "The distal phalange, here at the tip, is very tiny, but I imagine I could find a way to break that instead. Or also! What do you think? All three?" She smiled at him, sweetly, like a shark.

He whimpered. "No. None. Please?"

She sighed. "Well. All right. Since you said please. Now, you've been tremendously insulting to me, and to the man I love. So if you would rather avoid fractures, you're going to leave. Now. And if I hear that you spread those vile speculations to anybody inside or outside this ballroom, they won't find your frozen corpse until man lands on Jupiter. Understood? Nod yes or no."

He nodded frantically.

She let go of his hand and watched him scramble to his feet, knocking the chair askew, and flee for the door.

She let out her breath and looked around to check for Cisco. If he'd heard any of that, she might just go find Simon and break his fingers anyway.

But she spotted him working his way around the edge of the dance floor. He was far enough away that he would have had to use powers to hear what was going on, and he'd had no reason to do that. She sighed with relief and tugged at her dress to straighten it, pasting on a bright smile.

He came toward her with his beer in one hand and her white wine in the other. "Okay, I can't believe I'm actually saying this," he said, handing her the wineglass, "but Jake Tully grew up into an okay guy. He apologized! Can you believe that? He said he wasn't in a very good place in high school, but that doesn't excuse him taking it out on me, and he wanted to say he was sorry. And then he did!"

"That's amazing," she said, taking a sip.

"Yeah." He cocked his head. "And then he hit on me, which was awkward, but explained a lot. Hey, was that Si I saw you talking to just now? Where'd he go?"

"I think he had a personal emergency and had to leave."

"Aww. That's too bad. I wanted to catch up. We were tight in high school, but after, we sort of drifted apart." He looked at the door as if he was contemplating running out to the parking lot to see if he could catch Simon.

She put her hand on his arm. "Honey, maybe you should just let him go. I think he's one of those people who peaked in high school."

"Well, that doesn't matter to me. I don't care if he's working at a sporting-goods store or something now, he - "

"No. As a human being."

He studied her, frowning. "What'd you talk about?"

"Nothing important." She took the beer from him and set it on the table along with her wineglass. "You wanna dance?"


	2. Chapter 2

"Hey there," the bartender said. "What can I get for you?"

Cisco surveyed his choices. "Can I get a Dos Equis and a glass of Pinot Grigio?"

"The Dos Equis is no problem." He grabbed a bottle of beer and opened it for him. "But I just ran out of the Pinot. I can go get another bottle if you don't mind waiting?"

"No problem at all."

As the bartender went off to find more wine, Cisco leaned back against the bar and looked around the ballroom. He waved at a few people, who waved back. He was actually kind of glad he'd come.

He'd made a lot of small talk tonight, repeated his own carefully edited life story over and over again. Caitlin had smiled and made conversation and obligingly put up with him showing off his gorgeous, brilliant girlfriend to everyone he'd ever known in high school.

He'd run into old crushes, old rivals, old friends. Si (no, nope, Simon, he corrected himself) Danwell had practically been the first person he'd seen, but only for a moment. Melinda Torres was married, and a paralegal. ("Still not a priest," he'd told her. She'd looked at him holding hands with Caitlin and laughed and said she'd heard that, but not who she'd heard it from. Hmmm.) Angel Morales, who'd always sworn he'd never leave Central City, had been living in Detroit for seven years.

Waistlines were thicker, hairlines were higher. People talked about jobs and marriages and kids. Everyone looked like an _adult._

It was like those ten years had worked some kind of magic, transforming them from the Slackers, the Stoners, the Nerds, the Sluts, the Populars, the Jocks, to just - people.

"Cisco!"

Some lizard part of his brain recoiled and hissed at the voice. But he'd known this might happen. He'd even checked the nametag table and seen that particular nametag was gone.

Why couldn't this have happened when Caitlin was with him?

"Cisco?"

He braced himself and turned, blinking in a puzzled way. "Hi?"

"It's Jake!"

"… Jake," Cisco said, squinting at him.

"Tully?"

"Oh, _Jake!"_

Okay, he wasn't proud of his own pettiness.

Maybe a little proud.

Jake Tully had always looked like Central Casting's idea of a bully, all beefy build and buzzed hair and reddish face. It was too bad he'd always acted like it too. From a distance of years, Cisco knew Jake had been a kid, probably with a lot of bad shit in his life that he took out on anyone smaller or weaker or vulnerable in any way.

But somewhere inside him, there still lived the middle-schooler who got punched in the stomach on a daily basis, and that kid wouldn't have spit on Jake Tully if he was on fire.

Tonight, Cisco's personal nightmare was in a polo shirt and khakis, his face still red, his hair still buzzed, some of the muscle sliding southward into a beer gut but not quite all of it yet. And he was smiling. Sort of. "I was really hoping to see you!" he said.

Cisco took a deep swig of his beer and said coolly, "I don't have any lunch money you can steal, just so you know."

Jake flushed. "Yeah. That - yeah. I wanted to say - " He took a breath like a diver preparing to go under. "I wasn't in a good place in high school. Or middle school. Most of my time in school, honestly. I was mixed up about a lot of things and angry about a lot of other things and - but anyway, none of that was your fault and it wasn't right for me to do the things I did to you. So. I, uh. I wanted to apologize to you."

Cisco blinked at him, wondering if he'd stepped sideways through a breach and hadn't noticed. But no, the frequency of the universe was the right one.

It was just a universe where Jake Tully was standing in front of him, stuttering out, "S-so, I'm sorry."

"Wow," Cisco said. "Uh. Thank you? I guess?"

"Look, I'm not looking for you to forgive me or anything. I was really brutal. I wanted to get that out. Let you know I'm owning my past behavior."

Cisco put his beer down. "No really," he said. "Thanks. That took a lot. I've had to admit things like that before. It's not easy, and it was so long ago that you could probably pretend it never happened, but you didn't. I respect that, I really do. Thank you."

Jake shuffled his feet, looking away. "Well," he said. "I - like I said, I was really hoping to get the chance to say that tonight."

They stood awkwardly. Cisco looked around and saw no sign of the bartender. Was he pressing the grapes himself? "So!" he said. "What have you been doing since graduation? In your life?"

"Well, um." Jake rubbed a hand over his hair. "I screwed around for a few years. Did jobs I didn't like, kind of thing. About five years ago, I started to figure some things out and I went to Quad-C. Got my associate's, and I work for Mercy General now, doing medical billing."

"How is that?"

"It's good. I like it. Pay's pretty decent. I like the people." He shrugged. "You?"

"I'm an engineer."

"Yeah? I can see you doing that. Where do you work?"

"Star Labs."

His forehead crinkled. "Hey, wasn't that the place that - "

"Yyyyyyeah," Cisco said, bracing himself. He'd gotten a few bad reactions tonight, saying where he worked, even though it was coming up on five years.

Jake didn't look like he was going to be one of them. His face scrunched into lines of concern. "Were you there for that?"

"Yeah, I was, actually."

"Wow, rough, I'm sorry. I didn't even know they were still around."

"It's a way smaller operation now," Cisco said, picking at the label on his beer bottle. "We do a lot of inventing, independent research kind of thing. A lot of, mmmm, community-oriented kind of projects."

"How's that pay?"

"Uh, it's all right. Honestly, most of my income these days is from my own patents."

Jake's eyes widened. "Like stuff you actually invented?"

He shrugged and smiled. "Nothing too glamorous. Techniques, materials used in industry. But I get a decent chunk of change on a regular basis." Not for the first time, he was grateful that Barry went against the prevailing business model and let him and Caitlin submit their more useful discoveries to the patent office as themselves rather than under the Star Labs corporation.

In spite of his self-deprecation, Jake still looked impressed. "So you're a genius scientist inventor, basically."

"Billionaire playboy philanthropist," Cisco said, waving his hand. "Ha. Yeah."

The bartender was back, finally, apologizing for how long it had taken, pouring out the wine quickly.

"Well, here's the other half of my order, so … " He put a tip in the bartender's jar and picked up the wineglass. "It was interesting seeing you, Jake. Take care, okay?"

He wasn't more than a few steps away when Jake caught up with him again. "Uh, hey, I wanted to ask you - "

"Yeah?"

"Would you ever like to, uh, to go get coffee sometime?"

For the second time in ten minutes, Cisco wondered if he'd drifted into an alternate universe.

"Just so we're both clear - " he said. "Was that you hitting on me?"

Jake flushed even redder. "I said I got some things figured out, a few years back. That was one of them. I know, such a cliche. Homophobic bully was actually gay all along. But cliches get to be cliches for a reason, right?"

"Yeah," Cisco said. "Yeah. Guess so. Well, as - um. As flattering as that was, I'm actually with someone these days. She's here tonight." He hefted the wineglass. "This is for her. So I'll have to turn that offer down. But hey, I'm really happy that you got that worked out."

"Yeah, I heard about your date," Jake said. "And look, I'm sorry that the way I targeted you in high school for being gay made you feel like you had to go back in the closet just to come here tonight. I - "

"Whoa," Cisco said. "Clarification. I wasn't gay in high school. Never claimed to be. I was and am pansexual. The only closet I'm in is when I'm trying to find my favorite shoes."

"Really?"

"Yeah. The woman I'm with, her name is Caitlin. She works with me at Star Labs. She's a kickass bioengineer and geneticist. She's my girlfriend, not my beard."

"Shit," Jake said quietly. "I'm sorry. Again. Wow."

"That's okay, as long you're clear now. See you, Jake."

"I just figured Si would know what he was talking about."

Halfway through his turn, Cisco paused and turned back. "Si? You mean Simon? He met her. I introduced her as my girlfriend."

"Yeah, well, he didn't seem it was a real thing."

"What did he think, then, that it's a wacky sitcom plot where she's a friend doing me a favor?"

Jake's eyes darted from side to side. "Not a favor," he said in a low voice.

Cisco's eyes narrowed.

" … so much as a … financial transaction?"

Cisco put both the beer and the wineglass down on a nearby table and took a measured breath. before he emitted a frequency that would shatter them, and probably any other glassware in the immediate area. "Si Danwell," he said slowly, "is running around telling everyone that my girlfriend is a _prostitute?_ "

"Actually, he didn't bring it up until I asked if you were here and - maybe I misunderstood."

Cisco took another breath. "Okay," he said, picking the bottle and the glass up again. "I'll talk to Si. Clear it up. Thanks, Jake."

Jake opened his mouth, then shut it again. He nodded. "See you around, Cisco."

He worked his way around the dance floor, thinking hard. Was this maybe one last planned humiliation? For old times' sake?

But that would be a really elaborate con, and that had never been Jake's style. Plus, his vibes gave him a leg up in reading people these days, and he'd gotten nothing but honesty from Jake.

From Si, now - there'd been something sneering and nasty about him, just around the edges. But of course, there always had been.

To tell the truth, Cisco had liked that in high school, when both of them got sneered at on the regular. Hanging with Si meant they did a lot of sneering back (quietly. Where nobody could hear them). But it had lost its charm ten years on.

He craned his neck, trying to find Caitlin. She was still at the table where they'd been sitting, except now Si was sitting in his chair, talking to her.

Was he asking her if Cisco had hired her off Craigslist, or something?

For a moment, he considering vibing on them to hear the conversation. But she really hated when he vibed on her in non-emergency situations - they'd had some pretty big fights about it - so he resisted.

If Si really was spreading rumors about her, then Cisco would talk to him privately and find out. Then he would bring Caitlin in and they would handle it. If Jake really had misunderstood, then it was no big deal and Caitlin never needed to know that one person had maybe for about ten minutes thought she was his hired girlfriend.

He lost sight of them for a few minutes as people came between them, and when the momentary crowd cleared, she was alone at the table. He made an effort to look cheerful and unconcerned about anything, ever.

She smiled back at him, and he felt his own smile get more real just from that.

"Okay, I can't believe I'm actually saying this," he said, handing her the wineglass, "but Jake Tully grew up into an okay guy. He apologized! Can you believe that? He said he wasn't in a very good place in high school, but that doesn't excuse him taking it out on me, and he wanted to say he was sorry. And then he did!"

"That's amazing," she said. Her eyes were soft and affectionate.

Like he always did when she looked at him like that, he thought about pulling her into a quiet corner and kissing her until they were both dizzy. But that could wait. Really it could.

"Yeah. And then he hit on me, which was awkward, but explained a lot." He sought a perfect balance between casual and curious. "Hey, was that Si Danwell I saw you talking to just now? Where'd he go?"

She blinked and glanced into her glass - total tell. "I think he had a personal emergency and had to leave."

"Aww. That's too bad. I wanted to catch up. We were tight in high school, but after, we sort of drifted apart." He glanced at the door, wondering if he could catch Si outside.

She put her hand on his arm. "Honey, maybe you should just let him go. I think he's one of those people who peaked in high school."

He glanced at her, starting to frown. Caitlin could be a real snob sometimes, not malicious but thoughtless, her blind spots running roughshod over other people's reality. She'd gotten better, though, he'd thought. "Well, that doesn't matter to me. I don't care if he's working at a sporting-goods store or something now, he - "

"No. As a human being."

Oh. Wait. Shit. He _had_ said something. "What'd you talk about?"

"Nothing important," she said firmly.

And although he didn't mean to vibe, Cisco suddenly knew that his one-time, no-more friend had been gross and disgusting, that Caitlin had handled it in her own way, and that she absolutely, positively, didn't want him to know. Not for her sake, but for his. She didn't want him to know that someone he'd once cared about had insulted both of them.

Caitlin took his beer and set it down. Even though she was trying to hide it, her eyes were anxious. "You wanna dance?"

He let out his breath. Si was gone. Not just from the reunion, but from his life. High school was way, way over. Anyone who'd heard his bullshit and actually believed it was someone who didn't matter.

He smiled at her. "Can't think of anything I want to do more."

FINIS


End file.
